Running Through Corridors: Rob and Toby's Marathon Watch of Doctor Who (Volume 1: The 60s) (23 page)

Whatever my reservations about The Web Planet – and whatever fandom’s low opinion of it – I think much of this works in context. Sure, much of it
doesn’t
work, but let’s remember that this is the show’s second year, and they’re not resting on their laurels. This adventure was a work of madness, but there was definitely some method in it.

The Lion (The Crusade episode one)

R:
In its own way, this is as dated as The Web Planet. You start off being distracted by all the alarming facial hair – but it’s the blacked-up actors you remember. But, as we’ve seen in Marco Polo, the Saracens are treated with respect – because although their skin colour marks them out as foreign and exotic, their accents don’t; Bernard Kay, as Saladin, acts with the same rich Shakespearean delivery as Julian Glover’s King Richard the Lionheart. Certainly, this is going to be an issue that Doctor Who contends with for some time to come – and we’re still 12 years away from the wince-inducing portrait of the Chinese in The Talons of Weng-Chiang – but however awkward it looks from today’s perspective to see Caucasian actors wearing dark make-up, there’s nothing in the script or the performances which indicate that this is racist. Indeed, what’s remarkable about the episode is the way that it treats its two Famous Historical Characters. Saladin is
terrific –
the way he’s introduced, listening unobserved and unsmiling behind the curtain, gives him a real power; and once he emerges, Bernard Kay so effortlessly commands respect and fear without ever raising his voice or even appearing to change his inflection. There’s a wisdom and subtlety to the man, and for a moment we allow ourselves almost to
patronise
him, to think that this is the Kindly Arab. But there’s one magnificent moment in particular where Barbara, like the audience, is lulled into a false sense of security, as she contemplates how her storytelling will make her like Scheherazade. Saladin reminds her that the threat of death hung over her skills too... It’s his amorality that makes Saladin so compelling, and Bernard Kay is the equal of Julian Glover at commanding natural authority.

Indeed, if anything, it’s the amorality of Richard too which is so striking. Schoolboy history held that Richard the Lionheart was our hero king – that’s certainly what I gleaned from my Ladybird books when I was a kid – and all the Robin Hood legends, of course, paint him as the kindly monarch whose mere showing up at court could put an end to the schemes of the Sheriff of Nottingham. We know from
real
history, though, that Richard was one of the biggest gits ever to have sat on the throne of England (not that he was in England enough to warm the throne in the first place), but that’s not the point; it’s more that Doctor Who here refuses to paint Richard in the way that anyone watching in 1965 would have expected. We see in his first scene a king who is so capricious that he gets his fellows killed, and in his second a man given to bouts of melodramatic temper, who just can’t be reasoned with. (The cliffhanger has a double whammy – it’s not just that Barbara’s in danger, it’s that with Richard’s retort that she can rot in a cell for all he cares, the audience unequivocally are made to realise he’s not the great symbol of England they were hoping for, and it’s a real shock. It’s the equivalent of depicting Marco Polo as a villain, or Robespierre as a hero.) There’s a wonderful fluff that Julian Glover makes, and it actually
helps
this bold portrayal when he bemoans the fact that Richard des Preaux (not, more correctly,
William
des Preaux) has been captured. It gives the impression that for all his crocodile tears, this arrogant king can’t even remember his friend’s name.

T:
Douglas Camfield is setting himself up early as the Doctor Who action director – all right, this inevitably looks a bit clumsy to modern eyes, but the ambition in the staging of the early scuffles marks this out as bold work. There are carefully timed and cunningly hidden arrows, Ian gets a fight on film (with Val Mussetti, a racing driver of note when he’s not playing a Saracen warrior), and best of all, stuntman Derek Ware gets thunked in the chest by a whacking great sword. It’s impressive, even if the rather mimsy underarm sword-throw that butchers Ware would have caused the weapon to just bounce off his chest rather than pierce his armour and ribcage.

But what’s so striking about this episode is that it makes as its core the two elements that are central to all good drama: namely, writing strong dialogue, and getting talented actors to speak it. This first makes me wonder what transformation David Whitaker has undergone since he stopped being script editor – the man who formerly wrote The Edge of Destruction and The Rescue here gives us such excellent dialogue and characterisation; episode one alone is a work of ambiguity and poetry. And while Julian Glover happily plays up Richard’s weaknesses and petulance to the point that he’s as big a threat to the travellers’ safety as anything else in this strange land, you’re absolutely right, Rob, to highlight Bernard Kay as Saladin. This is an
astonishingly
powerful performance – the best yet seen in the series, even – and a lesson in the art of underplaying. Saladin’s face is locked in the aspect of a man wearied by war, who has no time or inclination to dress things up or even strut his power. He completely deadpans when telling des Preaux “I salute your chivalry,” leaving you in no doubt that while he means what he says, he’s not someone who needs to get all flowery and twee. He’s at war, after all.

The only thing detracting from Kay’s performance – and as you’ve already mentioned – is the way he and other actors are “blacked up”. In fact, dark make-up isn’t the only means by which the producers have juggled with ethnicity here: one of the extras is Oscar James (later one of the original cast on EastEnders), who is of West Indian descent. (Imagine his agent telling him that as a West Indian, he’d be perfect casting in the role of an Arab!) But while I am almost painfully politically correct, I can’t say this damaged the story’s dramatic intent for me – you’d never get away with this today (and rightfully so), but it’s easy to view this theatrical practice as the product of bygone era. Donald Sinden played Othello once, for goodness sake, and – in the very same year that The Crusade was broadcast – so did Laurence Olivier, in full blackface! He was even nominated for an Oscar for it!

In the very first preview version of Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf, I did a joke about the whole race issue – mentioning that only in the 60s could you get twelfth century, Arabic Muslims played by actors called “Bernard”, “Roger” and (best of all) “Reg”. It got a decent response, but I didn’t really know what I was trying to say, and it seemed like an easy dig when there’s so much else to enjoy in this rich, lyrical tale. What
is
funny, though, is how this episode has a selfish, thieving opportunist named “Thatcher”.

February 2nd

The Knight of Jaffa (The Crusade episode two)

R:
What I love about The Crusade is just how many different stories it juggles with at once, how tonally different they are from each other, and at what a terrific pace they’re told. So we open with a really clever scene in which the Doctor manages to manipulate Richard into reinterpreting the capture of des Preaux and Barbara as something to his political advantage; it’s delightfully done, and Richard’s commendation of Ian’s courage and the Doctor’s wit nicely assigns them their individual roles for the rest of the story. But we then contrast this with pure melodrama, as the scarred El Akir ponders revenge upon Barbara for humiliating him. And we contrast
that
with a scene of rare pomp within Doctor Who, as Ian is knighted by the King with all due solemnity. The Doctor can laugh about it all afterwards, and wish
he’d
been knighted too, but even he daren’t mar the tone of the ceremony. Just compare this to the corresponding scene in Tooth and Claw some 40 years later, where the Doctor and Rose are tourist bystanders to the same event even as it’s happening to them. And then we contrast that with a wonderful scene of comedy in which the Doctor runs rings around the chamberlain, who has realised our heroes are wearing stolen clothes. We’re watching a story about kings and sultans, about merchants and thieves.

In a typical historical adventure we might expect this story to be taking twice as long. El Akir hatches a plot against Barbara – and it’s succeeded within ten minutes’ screen time. Ian is knighted so he can journey to Saladin – he’s there within the same episode. The distinction of the (serious) historicals before this has been the way they’ve explored the setting with respectful depth; The Crusade offers us almost a snapshot portrait of an epic. We’re presented with a whole array of characters who are painted in vivid detail, then disappear out of the story. The first episode seemed to establish the idea that William des Preaux would be an important friend to Barbara – the job done, they’re never in the same scene ever again. The merchant Luigi Ferrigo becomes lackey to El Akir, smarms his way around Saladin and is exposed at record speed. Sheyrah establishes herself as loyal ally to Barbara, in a role you’d expect in any ordinary story would make her a confidante like a Ping-Cho or a Cameca... and then she’s gone. David Whitaker’s script feels like an extraordinary synthesis of the historical he established as story editor in the first season, coupled with the quicker paced action approach adopted by his successor Dennis Spooner. And the result is all rather exhilarating.

T:
You’re right... David Whitaker is so immersed in this world, he gives depth to characters with limited screen time; they fulfill their plot function with economy, but don’t feel at all sketchy or perfunctory. And because Doctor Who can’t do pitched battles at present, manners and guile are the weapons used in this engrossing historical drama.

But Whitaker nurtures his supporting cast while playing to each of the regulars’ strengths – this is perhaps no surprise, as he was the show’s original script editor and understands the characters very well. But he does a great job of using the TARDIS quartet in different dramatic ways, while insuring that their stories are packed with incident and peril. The Doctor is a clever manipulator, and has a little sabbatical in an amusing subplot with Vicki as his witty sidekick (fortunately, Maureen O’Brien has got the comedy stuff licked). Ian is the square-jawed hero, volunteering to go off, flirt with danger and rescue Barbara. And Barbara herself gets the meaty drama – she’s thrown in and out of jeopardy so much, she has to be brave and clever in equal measure. She needs all of her wits, in fact, to avoid winding up in El-Akir’s harem – all this travel through time and space, and she’s once again an object of lust. It’s enough to give a person a complex!

Oh, and look – the telesnap of Sir William throttling Luigi is exactly reproduced in the Target novel.

The Wheel of Fortune (The Crusade episode three)

R:
This series is certainly very keen on its forced marriages, isn’t it? It seems that whenever the TARDIS pops back into history, somebody is being wed to someone else! For the first time, though, we’re being invited to
sympathise
with this marriage and see it for the common good. That’s odd in itself – even odder, perhaps, within a context of an adventure serial with aliens and monsters and guns, that we’re being told we should prefer the dramatic resolution being something in a church with confetti and cake, as opposed to lots of sword fights and deaths on a battlefield. And it’s interesting to see that whereas we were supposed to baulk at Ping-Cho’s arranged marriage in Marco Polo from a twentieth century perspective, here Joanna’s arguments are that she doesn’t want to be wed to an
infidel
on point of principle. She defends herself on grounds of xenophobia, rather than freedom of choice.

It’s a measure of how much weight these scenes have that the Doctor’s attack upon the Earl of Leicester seems so unjust. Because the Earl has a rather good point to make – that whilst the politicians can play around with honeyed diplomacy, it’ll be the grunts on the battlefield like him who’ll have to pick up the pieces when diplomacy fails. John Bay could have played the part like the thug that the Doctor accuses him of being, but he makes good use of Whitaker’s Shakespearean spoof dialogue (deliberately aping Henry V here) and giving his case a convincing righteous anger. Just look, later on, when he’s required politely to praise Vicki’s dress – he’ll play the game of courtier, but only to a point.

And if Joanna objects to being married off to a Muslim, so in contrast we does Barbara resist being put inside El Akir’s harem. On the face of it, Barbara’s storyline is a lot less sophisticated than all these court scenes of intrigue, as she hides away from a melodramatic villain – but it’s a really clever parallel to it. And Jacqueline Hill continues to amaze. David Whitaker introduces a new character, Barbara’s protector Haroun, and has him detail his life history minutes after we’ve met him... and it’s through Hill’s reaction that we find it moving. The bravery she shows as she sacrifices herself for the safety of Haroun’s daughter Safiya, but more particularly the very human fear that Hill shows as she comes out of her hiding place
still
hoping against hope to make good her escape, is just wonderful.

What a magnificent episode. And on top of all that, we get a chamberlain who rolls his eyes to Heaven at the thought of modern-day transvestitism. You can’t get much better than this.

T:
The way that we here leap from gripping storyline to gripping storyline puts lie to the occasional assertion that the historicals are dull. Ian gets a bit of a scrap, and Barbara spends the whole episode essentially engaging in a aborted escape attempt – but her meeting with Haroun, and her sacrifice to save Safiya, keep this potentially perfunctory diversion interesting, moving and exciting.